MarketScope for Business Process Management Platform as a Service

Transcription

1 G MarketScope for Business Process Management Platform as a Service Published: 15 November 2013 Analyst(s): Michele Cantara, Teresa Jones, Kimihiko Iijima bpmpaas offerings differ in their abilities to automate, transform and manage processes and degree of cloudiness, as well as to accelerate application development and integration. This research reveals how these differences can be a roadblock to, or an accelerator of, business innovation. What You Need to Know This MarketScope helps business process owners and senior IT managers involved in business process improvement and transformation programs identify the different characteristics of bpmpaas offerings and determine if the technology in those offerings, as well as the commercial terms of their cloud contracts, is suited to their needs. The term "bpmpaas" refers to the delivery of business process management (BPM) platform as a service (PaaS) capabilities by a service provider (see Note 1). Organizations tend to consume bpmpaas, rather than on-premises BPM platforms: For development and test environments for BPM applications To accelerate time to benefit and avoid capital expenditures When IT resources are scarce or lack BPM platform expertise These reasons are not materially different than the motivations for using PaaS in general. As a result, this research focuses on helping business process owners and senior IT managers identify which bpmpaas is appropriate for their needs, rather than making the case for bpmpaas vs. onpremises BPM platform products. Businesses use bpmpaas to automate business processes, rapidly develop applications, connect business processes spanning multiple organizations, manage knowledge work and improve collaboration. A few have even transformed their businesses by using bpmpaas: Amazon uses bpmpaas to extend ERP. 1 Rather than customize these on-premises systems of record, bpmpaas is the foundation for systems of differentiation.

2 Telerx uses bpmpaas to deliver customizable access and reimbursement services to its healthcare provider clients. 2 bpmpaas provides the foundation for Telerx's business process as a service (BPaaS) business. Energy Alloys uses bpmpaas to improve order management by integrating to customers' supply chain systems. 3 Jacobs Engineering using bpmpaas as a tool to reduce IT backlog and empower project and program managers to rapidly create applications to manage complex, unique civil engineering projects. 4 ZumZum uses a bpmpaas to connect multiple cloud services together to deliver custom business processes to accounting firms. 5 New York State Department of Financial Services uses bpmpaas for case management and knowledge work. 6 This MarketScope profiles the bpmpaas capabilities of 14 vendors and, for each, answers the following questions to determine whether the bpmpaas will be able to support usage scenarios, such as those described above: Does it address some or all aspects of a business process? Choosing a bpmpaas that just treats processes as workflows can lock you into rigid process patterns that may not allow you to innovate your processes. On the other hand, if you primarily want to automate highly repeatable processes, choosing a full-featured bpmpaas can introduce unnecessary complexity that delays the time to solution (see "Analyze your Process Styles to Ensure Technology Choices Lead to Improved Business Outcomes" and "Leverage Dynamic and Ad Hoc Processes Now for Business Adaptability"). To what degree will bpmpaas empower process stakeholders outside of IT to make changes to a process and to actively participate in all phases of the business process life cycle? Putting business users on equal footing with IT, so they can work together in tandem when "to-be process" requirements are murky, is essential to businesses that need to iterate their way to business reinvention. How "cloudy" is the technology, and how cloudy is the service itself? A cloud-native PaaS is preferable when ease of use, fast results, high productivity and low cost of entry are the primary requirements, while a cloud-based PaaS is most appropriate for targeting migration projects, when organizations are looking for minimal disruption to the established code, skills and IT practices. Some offerings that are called bpmpaas may be hosted, rather than delivered as PaaS. With a bpmpaas, the obligations for managing the underlying cloud infrastructure and software licenses are the responsibility of the service provider, but with "infrastructure as a Page 2 of 40 Gartner, Inc. G

3 service (IaaS) + BPM platform middleware," these are your responsibilities (see "What IT Leaders Need to Know About Application PaaS Models and Use Patterns"). It can be difficult for cloud consumers to differentiate between managed, hosted cloud services (i.e., IaaS+ middleware) and PaaS. In general, pay as you go (PAYG) pricing and subscription-based licensing are available with PaaS, but not with managed cloud services. Managed cloud services also tend to require longer multiyear contracts (see "Understand IaaS, PaaS and the Role of Middleware to Make the Most of Each"). In addition, with IaaS+ the subscriber provisions the virtual machines and manages the version control of the bpmpaas software. With PaaS, these responsibilities are covered by the service provider. The most favorable MarketScope ratings have been assigned to those bpmpaas offerings that are focused on the following: Has continuous process improvement and rapid process change Treats processes as the work of one or more organizations Supports multiple process styles, involving structured and unstructured, static and dynamic processes Empowers business stakeholders and supports citizen development Fully exploits the five attributes of cloud services (is service-based, scalable, and elastic; shares compute resources; is metered by use; is based on Internet technologies) MarketScope bpmpaas refers to BPM platform capabilities that are delivered as a PaaS by a service provider. Customers use bpmpaas to build, run, manage and improve their business processes. Business processes are the actual work of a single organization or multiple organizations, and BPM technologies, such as those included in a bpmpaas, help manage that work (see Note 2). A BPM platform consists of BPM technologies with certain functionality, regardless of whether those characteristics are delivered via PaaS or as an on-premises product. A BPM platform must meet the following criteria: Uses a metadata-driven, model-driven approach to drive solution behavior. Includes all of the following: A graphical business process and/or rule modeling capability, in which the models represent the behavior of business processes and/or business rules A process registry/repository to handle the modeling metadata A process execution and state management engine and/or a rule engine Gartner, Inc. G Page 3 of 40

4 The BPM platform is a superset category of BPM technologies. It can include the minimal capabilities mentioned above. It can also encompass more sophisticated offerings, such as a business process management suite (BPMS) or an intelligent BPMS (ibpms). An ibpms is a subset of BPMS, rather than an entirely separate market category. Figure 1 depicts the relationship between these different types of BPM technologies. Figure 1. Relationship Between BPM Platform, BPMS and ibpms Any of these technologies can be delivered: as a platform as a service (bpmpaas) or as an on-premises product (cloud-enabled BPM platform) BPM Platform Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) Intelligent Business Process Management Suite (ibpms) Source: Gartner (November 2013) This research evaluates the capabilities of 14 bpmpaas offerings. (Note that the cloud-enabled BPM [CE-BPM] platforms of these vendors are not profiled in this research.) The reasons for deciding to use bpmpaas vs. an on-premises BPM platform are the same as the reasons for using PaaS vs. on-premises platforms (see "What IT Leaders Must Know About the Adoption of Platform as a Service"). This research focuses on helping business process owners and senior IT managers identify which bpmpaas is appropriate for their needs, rather than on making the case for bpmpaas vs. on-premises BPM platform products. Organizations use bpmpaas: Page 4 of 40 Gartner, Inc. G

5 To extend existing applications. Rather than customize these on-premises systems of record, BPM platforms become the foundation for systems of differentiation or systems of innovation (see "Best Practices for Implementing a Pace-Layered Application Strategy"). To reduce IT backlog by providing business stakeholders with an easy-to-use opportunistic application development platform for processes largely made up of human tasks, and social and collaborative interactions. As a means of accelerating time to solution in process innovation and business transformation programs. Market/Market Segment Description A bpmpaas is a BPM platform delivered via a PaaS delivery model. Some vendors offer their BPM platform via two delivery models: As a bpmpaas, where the BPM platform is delivered as a cloud service As a CE-BPM, where the BPM platform is a cloud-enabled application platform (CEAP) software product that is deployed by a service provider or by internal IT in a data center of their choice (see Note 3) This MarketScope only analyzes vendors' bpmpaas offerings. The term "BPM platform" refers to a set of BPM technologies, with certain functionality regardless of whether those characteristics are delivered via PaaS or as an on-premises product. A BPM platform must meet the following criteria: Uses a metadata-driven, model-driven approach to drive solution behavior (see Note 4) Includes all of the following: A graphical business process and/or rule modeling capability, in which the models represent the behavior of business processes and/or business rules A process registry/repository to handle the modeling metadata A process execution and state management engine and/or a rule engine A BPM platform may feature additional BPM technology capabilities, such as those found in a BPMS or ibpms, but these are not required by the definition. Thus, the term "BPM platform" is a "superset category" that also includes (but is not limited to) BPMS and ibpms. BPM platforms have fewer capabilities than a BPMS, which in turn has fewer capabilities than an ibpms. Table 1 summarizes the capabilities of each of these technologies, and the capabilities that distinguish a BPMS from an ibpms are shaded. Gartner, Inc. G Page 5 of 40

6 Table 1. Differences in the Capabilities of a BPM Platform, BPMS and ibpms Capabilities BPM Platform Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) Intelligent Business Process Management Suite (ibpms) A BPMS must have all of the capabilities of a BPM platform and more. An ibpms must have all of the capabilities of a BPMS and more. Use For Application development, process automation, collaboration. Application development, process automation, continuous process improvement, business transformation, collaboration. Application development, process automation, continuous process improvement, business transformation, intelligent business operations, collaboration. Process Orchestration Engine Minimally coordinates the interactions of people, and also may coordinate the interactions of devices and computer systems in long-lived and short-lived processes. Does what a BPM platform does, but also does all of the following: coordinates the interactions of all types of actors (people, devices, and computer systems) for structured flows, manages short-term and long-running processes, logs changes to the state of the coordinated resources, adjusts priorities and order of execution of process instances, terminates, updates, or suspends in-flight processes, schedules future work (processes and activities). Can do what a BPMS does, but also supports dynamic processes and unstructured flows. At a minimum, this requires both of the following: rule-driven workflow of predetermined process snippets and ad hoc (unplanned/unstructured) processes. Graphical Model-Driven Composition Environment Graphical process or rule modeling environment. Development tools and runtime support for heterogeneous composite applications. Process flow and rules must be explicit objects in the models. UI composition environment. Process model validation, such as domain checks, completion checks and warnings on inconsistent patterns. Same as a BPMS. Content Handling Optional. Natively manage or integrate to other ECM tools, to a minimum manage documents and (optionally) other types of content. Create, read, route and update content managed by third-party content repositories. Same as a BPMS. Human Interactions Minimally coordinates the interactions of people. Personalized user workbench for all participants. Provides interactive access to tasks, content and other resources. User experience can be tailored to organization unit, role, skills and/or individual. Web and multichannel support with forms, portlets and rich UIs, leveraging personalization. Does what a BPMS does and also provides both of the following: native or HTML5-based support for one or more mobile devices, collaboration capabilities to help people exchange data and ideas Page 6 of 40 Gartner, Inc. G

7 Capabilities BPM Platform Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) Intelligent Business Process Management Suite (ibpms) about a process in a flexible, usercontrolled manner. Process Intelligence and BAM Optional. Provides active analytics via process intelligence BAM to facilitate all of the following: continuous intelligence (including monitoring, alerting and maintaining context-awareness), monitoring metrics related to processes (interactions and resources) coordinated by the tool's orchestration engine, interactive monitoring dashboards, detecting threats, opportunities and other anomalies, raising alerts for at-risk process instances and activities, automatically trigger responses to threat and opportunity situations through messages, service calls or other interfaces. Ability to log process events into a process performance warehouse/audit trail or event log. Does what a BPMS does for process intelligence, but data intelligence BAM is required, not optional. This includes adapters to capture events from outside of the ibpms process orchestration engine and continuous analytics to display KPIs and other metrics on business dashboards, send alerts and trigger responses. Business Rule Processing Optional. Software-based reasoning that infers logical consequences from a set of facts or axioms. Manages and executes rules that represent business policies. Minimally, must support forward chaining/deductive reasoning. Same as a BPMS. Connectivity Support for HTTP, REST, SOAP, WSDL, and ODBC or JDBC. Same as BPM platform. Same as a BPMS. Management and Administration Configuring, deploying and administering solution artifacts, version control in conjunction with the registry/repository. Includes same capabilities as a BPM platform and also includes the following capabilities: configuration and management (configuring, deploying and administering the BPMS platform and application artifacts, version control in conjunction with the registry/repository, security by application, user, role, group, department and function). Management and monitoring (start, stop and manage the performance of processes and their associated components). Logging, managing audit trails. Same as a BPMS. Registry/ Repository Stores and manages process-related metadata and artifacts. Reporting and query (browse and search) Includes same capabilities as a BPM platform and also includes the following capabilities: version control (working in conjunction with administrative tools). Holistic information model that covers all essential aspects of the process, but is also extensible. Security controls on the registry/repository. Same as a BPMS. Gartner, Inc. G Page 7 of 40

8 Capabilities BPM Platform Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) Intelligent Business Process Management Suite (ibpms) capabilities. Version control. Source: Gartner (November 2013) Page 8 of 40 Gartner, Inc. G

9 Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria The 14 bpmpaas vendors that qualified for this survey fulfilled the following five requirements: 1. Their offering was a cloud service that was available as a PaaS. A service offering qualifies as a PaaS service when it does all of the following: Uniformly offers a well-defined middleware capability to any qualified customer (one-tomany, "retail"). Allows for self-service, real-time provisioning of service by a qualified customer. Supports usage-dependent billing (through variable billing or just thresholds on fixed billing). Does not require direct interaction in the cloud with the underlying system infrastructure (i.e., virtual machines [VMs] and storage). Note that Gartner's definition of PaaS excludes cloud services that are deployed via IaaS+ middleware (i.e., where the subscriber is exposed to IaaS directly and is responsible for managing the middleware) (see "Delivery Models for Application Infrastructure in the Cloud; Beware the Lure of False PaaS"). 2. The technology in the bpmpaas must be a BPM platform as defined in the market segment description above. 3. The bpmpaas version that is being evaluated needed to be generally available by 30 May Buyers could purchase this version of the bpmpaas as a distinct service. It cannot only be available as an embedded feature of BPaaS or SaaS. 5. The bpmpaas version that is being evaluated must be used in production by at least 10 distinctly different companies in at least two major geographies (North America, EMEA, Latin America, Asia/Pacific, Japan) and in at least three vertical industries. A number of other vendors who offer bpmpaas were considered for this research, but they did not meet all of the inclusion criteria. Vendors that were considered but not included in this study for various reasons were Colosa, HandySoft, IBM, Integrify, Metasonic, MicroPact, OpenWork, Perceptive Software, Rage Frameworks, Roubroo, Software AG, Whitestein and XMPro. Rating for Overall Market/Market Segment Overall Market Rating: Promising PaaS is a mainstream component of organizations' cloud strategies. Seventy-five percent of organizations surveyed are using PaaS or plan to, 7 and bpmpaas is the third largest segment in the PaaS market. 8 Furthermore, bpmpaas is successfully being used by small or midsize businesses (SMBs) and large enterprises to develop new process-centric applications and extend on-premises systems of record with systems of differentiation and systems of innovation in the cloud. bpmpaas Gartner, Inc. G Page 9 of 40

10 is also successfully used as a vehicle to accelerate business transformation. While bpmpaas can vary in its ability to support different process styles, deliver process agility, and support systematic or opportunistic application development, customers are highly satisfied and report significant improvement in business outcomes from using bpmpaas. From a technology perspective, the bpmpaas market is sound and has delivered results. However, the bpmpaas market still has to clear one major hurdle before it can be considered Positive, and that hurdle relates not to the soundness of technology, but to the pricing, licensing and sourcing models in use by bpmpaas vendors. For many bpmpaas vendors, these contractual terms and sourcing relationships are much more akin to managed, hosted services or outsourcing. Outsourcing and managed services contracts that are enabled by a BPM platform may cost more and may lock consumers into longer contract terms, compared to PaaS delivery models that are true to the elasticity and PAYG spirit of cloud. Outsourcing and managed services contracts typically do not allow the client to automatically provision additional resources, such as adding new users or compute capacity. Buyers should pay as much attention to the commercial terms and conditions of their PaaS contracts as they do to the technology capabilities of the underlying platform to make sure the solution meets their requirements (see "Gartner apaas Report Card: Choose Your Cloud Application Platform Wisely"). Evaluation Criteria Page 10 of 40 Gartner, Inc. G

11 Table 2. Evaluation Criteria Evaluation Criteria Weighting Product/Service Customer Experience Innovation Comment The cloud service must be available as a PaaS. The BPM platform delivered as PaaS must include a process execution and state management engine. The bpmpaas must feature a model-driven composition environment. The bpmpaas must include a process component registry/repository that manages metadata and promotes process component leverage and reuse. Higher marks are given to bpmpaas that feature additional capabilities, such as process discovery, analytics, monitoring, simulation, optimization, complex event processing, social interactions, content management and collaboration. See Note 5 for additional product/service evaluation criteria details. Customer experience should focus on a BPI or business transformation scenario where there is equivalent emphasis on business user/business analyst and IT roles throughout the business process life cycle. The customer experience should foster collaboration and active participation of both business stakeholders and IT in all phases and activities of the business process improvement life cycles. See Note 6 for additional customer experience evaluation criteria details. Higher marks given to bpmpaas: That support unstructured, ad hoc, adaptive case management and intelligent process styles. High High Standard That are suitable for the "BPM sweet spot" (see "Gartner Reference Architecture for Cloud-Enabled Application Platforms"). Include social BPM, extreme collaboration and predictive analytics capabilities. That feature cloud-native PaaS capable of "shared-everything" multitenancy (see Note 7). Process templates are also viewed as evidence for innovation (see Note 8). Geographic Strategy Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial, The bpmpaas must be available in at least two major regions (North America, EMEA, Latin America, Asia/Pacific, Japan), either directly or through ecosystem partners. A bpmpaas receives high marks for support of multiregion hybrid cloud deployment and ability to address country-specific information privacy and data usage requirements. Viability includes an assessment of the overall organization's financial health, the financial and practical success of the business unit, and the likelihood that the individual business unit will continue investing in the product, will continue offering the product and will advance the state of the art within the organization's portfolio of products. Standard Standard Gartner, Inc. G Page 11 of 40

12 Evaluation Criteria Strategy, Organization) Comment Weighting Sales Execution/Pricing Market Understanding Higher marks given for bpmpaas pricing models that are straightforward and readily auditable by end consumers, and that are automatically elastic in an upward and downward direction. Minimal restrictions on length/term of contract are preferred. Ability of the provider to understand end buyers' wants and needs and to translate those into its bpmpaas offering. Ability of the provider to also understand how its bpmpaas can be exploited by cloud services value chain partners to improve the overall viability of the company and the offering. Standard High Source: Gartner (November 2013) Page 12 of 40 Gartner, Inc. G

13 Figure 2. MarketScope for Business Process Management Platform as a Service RATING Strong Negative Caution Promising Positive Strong Positive Appian AppPoint Software Solutions Barium BP Logix Eccentex edorasware Fujitsu Interneer Knowesia Kofax OpenText Pegasystems PNMsoft Questetra x x x x x x x x x x x x x x As of 15 November 2013 Source: Gartner (November 2013) Vendor Product/Service Analysis Appian Appian Cloud 7.2, Reston, Virginia Available as a PaaS since 2006, Appian Cloud is now used by several hundred organizations and public-sector agencies, with more than 45,000 users. Appian, a private company, is one of the top 10 BPMS vendors in terms of market share. It is also one of the few heritage pure-play BPM vendors left in the BPMS market, as the BPMS market has undergone considerable consolidation between 2011 and Growth in Appian Cloud is outpacing Appian's on-premises business. The on-premises Appian ibpms and Appian Cloud share the same codebase, making hybrid deployments possible. Major Appian Cloud customers include Amazon, Enterprise Rent-a-Car, GSA, Oakley, pshealth and State of Ohio Office of Budget Management. Named user pricing starts at $95 per user per month, and participating user pricing is available based on number of users and the usage scenario. Typical contracts are three years in duration. Appian will work with customers to establish custom pricing models if these standard terms are not sufficiently flexible. Available in all Amazon EC2 data centers worldwide, Appian Cloud is a Java-based direct modeldriven application platform that supports multiple process styles, including intelligent business operations, case management, social collaboration and ad hoc processes. Gartner, Inc. G Page 13 of 40

14 Appian is squarely focused on BPM usage scenarios, although some customers use Appian Cloud primarily for application composition in both systematic and opportunistic projects. Appian Cloud has a track record in supporting process reinvention in business transformation programs, continuous process improvement programs and process-specific solutions. Most customers elect to deploy Appian Cloud in a shared OS multitenancy model, but shared-everything multitenancy is available for those customers who want it. Customers cited accelerated time to solution and ease of use as major benefits of using Appian Cloud. On average, after purchasing the service, they were able to get applications up and running in six weeks or less, since they did not have to go through a lengthy hardware and on-premises license procurement process. Robust support from Appian and platform flexibility, process visibility and agility were also noted as major benefits. They also reported that social BPM capabilities in Appian Cloud (called Worksocial) accelerated process discovery across widely distributed workforces and expedited problem resolution and reduced cycle time in processes involving field agents. Strengths Appian Cloud is one of the few cloud-native bpmpaas offering full ibpms capabilities, including an in-memory events and analytics engine that supports real-time access to and analysis of KPIs managed by Appian Cloud or sourced from external BI systems, applications and event streams. Unlike many of its competitors, the vast majority of Appian Cloud deployments involve production systems, rather than development and test environments. Appian Cloud is a direct model-driven application platform that is appropriate in situations where non-it resources will be developing and evolving significant portions of the BPM solution. Cautions Most Appian bpmpaas customers opt to use Appian Cloud in a shared hardware or shared OS multitenancy model. As a result, the performance of production workloads on Appian Cloud in a shared-everything multitenancy environment is less proven. Some customers find Appian's licensing and pricing practices confusing, particularly in situations where Appian is proposing a custom contract. Optimal Usage Scenarios Use Appian Cloud when you want BPMS or ibpms capabilities that have been proven in numerous enterprise-class production environments, and when you also want an easy-to-use platform suitable for involving business stakeholders and other process participants in process discovery and innovation, particularly for unstructured and intelligent processes. Appian Cloud is appropriate for organizations that need to extend their systems of records with new applications that are Page 14 of 40 Gartner, Inc. G

15 systems of differentiation or innovation. Appian Cloud is also a suitable foundation for continuous process improvement and business transformation. Rating: Strong Positive AppPoint Software Solutions AppsOnAzure (2013v2), Bangalore, India Founded in 2005 by a team of former IBM Rational executives, AppPoint is a small private company that launched the Microsoft.NET-based BizApp Studio as an on-premises BPM platform in In 2011, AppPoint launched its bpmpaas version of this technology, AppsOnAzure. The on-premises AppPoint BizApp Studio and AppsOnAzure share the same codebase. AppsOnAzure, a cloudbased platform, is deployed as a BizApp Studio cloud application pattern on Microsoft Azure. Most tenants use a shared OS or shared database multitenancy model. AppsOnAzure is used by more than 20,000 users in a dozen companies. The majority of AppsOnAzure clients are based in India, although AppPoint is expanding its presence in other regions. AppsOnAzure, an indirect model-driven application platform, is principally used for systematic application development projects, rather than continuous process improvement. AppsOnAzure is best suited to business processes that can be mapped out in advance, rather than dynamic unstructured processes. The user experience is geared toward IT resources who are looking to accelerate application development of new applications, rather than business analysts or citizen developers looking to manage and improve business processes. These new applications often extend ERP and other applications. AppPoint offers its own training and implementation services, but it also partners with service providers such as TCS, Genpact, Happiest Minds, HCL and Mindtree. Customers are pleased with the overall ease of application development, but they do report that the platform is not appropriate for managing highly complex business processes and heavy integration with back-end systems. Pricing is based on a per-user per-month model, ranging from $6 to $25, depending on overall number of users, as price per user decreases as volume of users increases. Customers are billed monthly. Capabilities that complement AppsOnAzure include PQube Apps, a suite of process-centric applications that automate common business processes spanning human tasks and existing applications, as well as AppsOnMobile, a mobile business application infrastructure, which supports the development of mobile applications and orchestration and tracking of mobile interactions. Strengths AppsOnAzure reduces time to application development in systematic application development projects by allowing developers to rapidly integrate applications and human tasks with little to no coding. It is one of the few bpmpaas available on Microsoft Azure, and many deployments involve onpremises and cloud integration. Gartner, Inc. G Page 15 of 40

16 Process templates and development kits for native and Web-based mobile applications help jump-start projects. Cautions AppsOnAzure is an indirect model-driven platform and, as a result, code must be generated, and solutions composed and then deployed. Consequently, AppsOnAzure should not be used for the following advanced process styles: goal-directed process, ad hoc business processes or when immediate changes to in-flight business process are required. Primarily focused on IT-driven application development vs. collaboration between business and IT resources in business transformation and continuous process improvement across the process life cycle. Limited geographic presence. Optimal Use Case AppsOnAzure is most appropriate for situations where IT resources are the primary developers of the process-based solution and where process integration via application integration is a major requirement. Use AppsOnAzure when the primary business outcome desired is accelerated application development, rather than ongoing business process improvement or transformation. Rating: Promising Barium BariumLive , Gothenburg, Sweden Barium is a private company, with 40 employees based in Sweden. Its Microsoft-based, cloudnative bpmpaas, BariumLive, is used by 40,000 users across 105 companies. The largest deployment of BariumLive supports 9,000 users. BariumLive customers are primarily based in the Nordic countries, U.K., Italy, Netherlands and Switzerland. It is hosted by an infrastructure provider based in Sweden. Marquee clients include Ikea and AstraZeneca. Using the tagline "Map to App," BariumLive provides a simple-to-use, direct model-driven application platform that allows savvy business users to quickly develop process-centric applications for a specific department or for a process that spans multiple organizations. Approximately one-third of BariumLive deployments support processes spanning multiple enterprises. The BariumLive process execution is event-based and supports BPMN 1.0 modeling and execution at present, with BPMN 2.0 enhancements planned for 2Q14. It supports most types of process interactions, but is primarily used for processes involving human tasks, collaborations and rule-driven workflows. Users can created personalized dashboards using BAM features, but process intelligence and analytics are limited to analyzing process performance data coordinated by the BariumLive process execution engine. Page 16 of 40 Gartner, Inc. G

17 Pricing is done by user per month ($29), with discounts available for volume and length of contract. Billing is done monthly or annually. Barium provides training and consulting services, but also works with a number of independent software vendors (ISVs) and consulting partners in EMEA. Barium customers are enthusiastic, and find the offering allows them to shortcut IT backlogs and quickly develop new stand-alone processes. On the whole, few feel sufficiently confident to alter these process-based applications and tend to rely on Barium doing this, which may limit the ability of the company to scale if this burden becomes too great. Strengths Very intuitive, easy-to-use cloud-native platform that appeals to business stakeholders as citizen developers looking to automate and continuously improve processes centered on human tasks spanning one or more organizations. Event-based process execution engine and rule-based workflow result in flexible business processes. Cautions Use of a Swedish-based managed services provider for cloud infrastructure services is less attractive to organizations that are not based in the Nordics. Process intelligence and analytics are limited to analyzing process performance data coordinated by the BariumLive process execution engine. Optimal Usage Scenario Use BariumLive when you want encourage business users to quickly develop and evolve business processes that predominantly involve human tasks and collaboration across organizational boundaries. Rating: Promising BP Logix Process Director 2.5, Vista, California BP Logix Process Director is available both as a bpmpaas and as a CE-BPM. This analysis pertains to the bpmpaas, Process Director Cloud Edition, a Microsoft-based, cloud-native platform, which is in use by 30 companies and approximately 5,000 users. Customers touted Process Director's low cost, ease of use and the ability to rapid create applications that automate human tasks and integrate to other applications and cloud services. bpmpaas pricing is done on a per-processor basis and, on average, is $5,000 per processor per month. Process Director features a business rule capability, which provides rule-driven workflow by reordering process "snippets" based upon conditions. Process Director supports two types of Gartner, Inc. G Page 17 of 40

18 process models, a traditional flow-centric model and a process timeline model. The Process Director execution engine uses "predecessor logic" to execute the process timeline model (i.e., the process timeline model identifies what conditions have to be met before a step in the process can be run). Process steps can be run in parallel and process dependencies can be visualized via a Gantt-like chart to monitor potential delays. This approach can improve process efficiencies and make processes less rigid. The process timeline capability alerts process participants if a process is taking too long or might take too long, and is geared toward project managers that want to carry out the work underlying the process, rather than business process owners that want to continuously improve the process. BP Logix customers are primarily using Process Director as a CE-BPM, not as a PaaS. They are also predominantly using Process Director for highly structured repeatable processes involving forms-based workflow and document routing, rather than the process timeline. Application development and process modifications were done by IT resources, rather than business analysts or savvy business users. Strengths Low-cost, per-processor-based pricing allows multiple applications to be deployed and run on a single bpmpaas instance. Rapid application development and process automation by IT resources, as well as integration with popular external cloud services. Process Director bpmpaas is localizable to any language, with Japanese language localization available out of the box. Cautions Most customers are using Process Director as a CE-BPM on their private cloud, rather than consuming it as a bpmpaas in the public cloud. Process intelligence is limited to analyzing work items and tasks and identifying bottlenecks, and won't uncover process performance issues that are not related to time and productivity. Optimal Usage Scenario Process Director Cloud Edition is most appropriate for structured, semirepeatable processes, where rapid application development and integration by IT are the primary goals of a process automation project. It is also appropriate for rule-driven workflow. It is less appropriate for continuous process improvement and business innovation scenarios as it lacks support for all phases of the process improvement life cycle and, based on customer feedback, processes appear to be developed and changed by IT, rather than by business users. Lastly, it has limited process intelligence capabilities compared to other BPM platforms. Process intelligence features of BP Logix provide insight into task management, rather than assisting in the discovering of opportunities for ongoing process improvement. Rating: Promising Page 18 of 40 Gartner, Inc. G

19 Eccentex AppBase 5.0, Culver City, California Eccentex AppBase 5.0 is a.net-based BPM platform that is delivered as cloud-native bpmpaas. Eccentex relies on Rackspace as its infrastructure partner. AppBase is currently used by 15,000 users in 60 customers, which are primarily North American organizations. It is also deployed by customers in the EMEA and Asia/Pacific regions, and local language versions are available in English, Russian, Ukrainian and French Canadian. AppBase also works with global C&SIs as well as smaller consultancies. AppBase subscriptions are $100 to $150 per user per month, and per-case pricing is also available. Billing is typically done on an annual basis, which may be less attractive to customers looking for monthly or quarterly PAYG billing. Eccentex offers its bpmpaas directly to end-user organizations, but it is more frequently used by internal IT organizations in very large enterprises that have deployed AppBase on their private cloud. Eccentex is also used by an ecosystem of ISV partners, which deploy AppBase as embedded PaaS for their SaaS customers. Customers and partners are highly satisfied with AppBase and cited reuse and rapid development of mission-critical case applications by business analysts, rather than IT, as key benefits to using AppBase. The core AppBase "engine" is rule-driven and event-based, and can handle structured and unstructured process styles. It also supports document management, BPM and multichannel capture. AppBase Studio, the modeling environment in the bpmpaas, uses a proprietary graphical notation standard, which is a subset of BPMN to design business processes. AppBase Studio is also used to define business objects and data, as well as the presentation layer of the application. AppBase targets rapid application development of case management applications for knowledge workers (see "The Case for Case Management Solutions"). Case applications built on AppBase generally address three scenarios: incident processing/dispute resolution, investigative processes and service requests. Eccentex has prebuilt more than 15 process templates that customers use to accelerate development of case applications. Strengths Rapid development of case management applications by non-it resources. Solid ecosystem of consulting and outsourcing partners. Cautions Compared with other bpmpaas, Eccentex has few public cloud deployments. Many deployments are in customers' or partners' private clouds. Some contracts require annual billing in advance, an approach that is more like managed services. This approach eliminates the PAYG benefits that customers normally get from PaaS Gartner, Inc. G Page 19 of 40

20 Optimal Usage Scenario AppBase is a case management application development environment with embedded BPM capabilities. As a result, use AppBase to develop, manage and evolve case management solutions for incident processing, investigative processes and service requests, rather than for generalpurpose BPM. In addition, use AppBase when you want a relationship with your PaaS vendor that mixes aspects of managed services with cloud services delivery. Rating: Promising edorasware edoras one, Bern, Switzerland Edoras one is a Java-based, cloud-native platform available both as a bpmpaas and as a CE-BPM. It uses the open-source Activiti process engine for process execution These capabilities are part of edoras gear, one of the two components in edoras one. Edoras vis is the modeling environment for edoras one. It supports BPMN 2.0-based modeling and execution. Edoras one targets content-intensive processes that involve significant human tasks and collaboration. It is promoted as a solution for developing work management applications. It is built around the metadata construct of a work item. Processes, rules, services, etc. are all work items. There are some key differences between the edoras one bpmpaas and the on-premises CE-BPM offerings: Work items in edoras one emit event streams in real time, but real-time reporting and BAM are not available in the bpmpaas. Real-time BAM in the bpmpaas is planned for 4Q13. At present, real-time event data can be exported and then used in other BAM or BI tools or via the CE- BPM version of edoras one. The on-premises, CE-BPM version of edoras one offers a CMIS interface to Alfresco, but this feature is not currently available in the bpmpaas. Edoras one is a direct-model-driven application platform, making it suitable for automating structured processes such as forms-driven workflow and document management, as well as unstructured collaboration processes. Most organizations use edoras one to automate work involving multiple groups within their enterprise. Individuals and groups can collaborate on process improvements by embedding suggestions (and content) as comments in models. Teams can also collaborate on improvements via a wikilike environment. Crystal Ball, a separately available extension to the edoras one bpmpaas, provides offline simulation based on historical process performance data. The edoras one bpmpaas is used by 20 companies and 350 users, and localized versions are available for English, German, French, Spanish and Italian. The majority of edoras one customers are located in EMEA, with some in North America. Edorasware hosts edoras one in its own data center in Switzerland, which serves Swiss and German customers. In other regions, edoras one is hosted on Amazon Web Services (WS). Pricing starts at 365 per user per year for the Small Team Page 20 of 40 Gartner, Inc. G